With its flowing, tilting walls, the Marta in East Westphalia’s Herford is one of the most unusual museum buildings in the world. For the façade the American star architect Frank Gehry chose dark red bricks which stand in stark contrast to the shiny stainless steel roof and the plastered white core of the building.Marta Herford sets standards. With its innovative and future-oriented approach it is a place where knowledge, thinking and creativity are combined with sheer joie de vivre. This is where questions about the present meet the ideas of tomorrow.
Marta Herford is an internationally oriented museum for contemporary art with a special focus on architecture and interior design. Exhibition and education are at the centre of our engagement with art. At the same time we feel bound by the classical functions of a museum: collecting, preserving and researching. In all of this our focus remains on contemporary trends and developments, and is always inquisitive, open and experimental. The communication of our ideas to the outside is rooted in our regional identity and based on an international network.
As soon as the Marta Herford opened, it began to develop a young museum collection. This is made up to today mainly of striking works from the diverse exhibition program and the close artist collaborations. Numerous location-based installations have also been acquired permanently for the museum collection.